Virtual three-day Karachi Literature Festival kicks off

The 12th edition of the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF), organised by the Oxford University Press (OUP), started on Friday. The festival, which is considered a key cultural event of the city, is being held online this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The theme of this year's KLF is ‘Imagining New Frontier’ and many sessions at the festival intend to bring forth thought-provoking discussions on the post-Covid-19 world. Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the festival, Arshad Saeed Husain, the OUP Pakistan managing director, said the pandemic had compelled people to imagine new frontiers of medicine, vaccines, digital learning and working from home.

The pandemic had brought the world closer together to find out-of-the-box creative solutions, he said, citing how vaccines against Covid-19 were developed in record time and educational institutions used technology to continue academic activities when they could not hold physical classes.

“We need to re-imagine a safe work environment whether in office, home or schools. The world is already re-structuring delivery methods with digital and blended tools of learning,” he remarked.

Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American academic specialising in the Middle East and the Islamic world who also served as the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC from 2012 to 2019, delivered the keynote address.

The virtual KLF is a three-day event that would conclude tomorrow (Sunday). More than 140 speakers were included in the festival including Zehra Nigah, Tarik Ali, Maleeha Lodhi, Ben Okri, Ahdaf Soueif, Victoria Schofield, Ishrat Hussain, and Anita Weiss.

The speakers represent 12 countries, including Pakistan, the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Bangladesh, Iran, Egypt, France, Germany, United Arab Emirates, India and Kenya.

A total of 42 sessions have been planned during the three-day festival that include discussions, mushairas in Urdu and English, book launches, and readings on subjects such as education, Covid-19, science fiction, and current affairs.

After the inaugural ceremony, the first day of the festival featured the launch of Victoria Schofield’s book ‘Fragrance of Tears: My Friendship with Benazir Bhutto’. There were also sessions on cartooning, counter-revolutionary wave in the Arab World, anti-colonialism and Shamsur Rehman Farooqi, an eminent Urdu critic who passed away recently.